Is Therapeutic Alliance Influenced by Gender in Marriage and Family Therapy?

The relationship between therapist and client(s) is a special one because clients trust their therapist with their vulnerability (Bird, 1993). Wynne (1988) suggested that the therapeutic alliance should be a central feature of empirical research in marriage and family therapy, but it has received scant attention. The feminist critique of marriage and family therapy has criticized family therapy theory for reifying the family and ignoring the individual needs of each client. The therapist-client relationship was examined using the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI; Horvath & Greensberg, 1986, 1989). Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to examine the different perceptions of men and women on the sub-scales. Gender of therapist and modality were used as interaction variables.